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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29432868">a family counts itself</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl'>TolkienGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [350]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>After the Lake, Brother-Sister Relationships, Conversations, Gen, Gold Rush AU, title from a poem by Mary Oliver</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:34:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29432868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She tries to see in him all the secret feeling she will not permit herself. She tries to see whether or not he was—whether he is—afraid.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Finrod Felagund | Findaráto &amp; Galadriel | Artanis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [350]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a family counts itself</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>We've recently passed a million words, just one month short of our two-year anniversary! Many, many thanks to all the readers who have stuck with us from the start or joined along the way. We have a lot of exciting plans lined up. There's a few more twists and turns that will take place in the "Healing Year" subseries, but never fear, the horizon is full of promise--both good and bad. ;)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Can’t have so much as a cup of water from the pump without being hexed,” Galadriel says, taking a place on the bench beside her brother. He has a horse blanket flung over his shoulders rather than a coat. His hair, a straw-colored tangle, is still damp.</p><p>“Hexed?” he says in reply, the furrows of his brow showing plain as day that he is not really listening to her.</p><p>Galadriel sighs. “By Caranthir. He’s fixing us all with the evil eye. If you’re not helping steam his precious Maedhros like a pudding, you’re of no use to him.”</p><p>“He’s worried,” Finrod says, because of course any injustice—no matter how slight—gains his attention. “With good reason.”</p><p>Galadriel does not say anything to <em>that</em> for a long moment. She gazes out from their bench-perch into the yard. The yard is an ugly place, by her reckoning. The woodpile was restacked after the invaders scattered it, but the packed earth is so bare of grass or any other growing thing that it is all over mud and boot-prints. Down and away to the left, Mithrim’s land slopes into a field. Up and away to the right, the rocky hill-ground leads to the wider world.</p><p>Aredhel has hunted there. Galadriel hates hunting, but perhaps she should acquire a taste for it, if it <em>is</em> the only way out.  </p><p>“If we are sparing a flood and every speck of tea in the place for bedraggled brothers,” she says, “I’d like a word.”</p><p>“What? No, no. I’m all right.”</p><p>“Coatless.”</p><p>“As a matter of fact, m’dear—” This, with a twist of their father’s smile, “Your beloved cousin Caranthir is washing it for me.”</p><p>“So that’s why I’m dying of thirst,” she retorts airily. “Honestly, Finrod. It needed <em>another</em> swim?”</p><p>He meets her eyes. Theirs are the same color, as is their hair. She might as well be looking in a mirror. She tries to see in him all the secret feeling she will not permit herself. She tries to see whether or not he was—whether he <em>is</em>—afraid.</p><p>“It was a bad time,” he says, quietly.</p><p>“No worse than all the days before though, was it? For Maedhros, I mean.” Sympathy does not come easily to her, but she can attempt a little when her brother is looking at her so. She likes to reflect Finrod back to himself, when she can.</p><p>“It wasn’t Maedhros,” he says, lower still. “Who was trying.”</p><p>Now <em>this</em> is new information. New and decidedly surprising, if only because Galadriel has given little thought to her cousin Maglor’s doing since…since the days of teahouses and tete-a-tetes, in New York. She did not like him them. He was a hanger-on of Maedhros in all but his neurotically expansive talent. She had no use for hangers-on.</p><p>“Good God,” she says. “Why did <em>he</em> do it?”</p><p>“We’re fortunate, I think,” Finrod answers—although, to be sure, it isn’t an exact answer. “We don’t hate ourselves for all that we’ve done, and all that’s been done to us. I can imagine how mad-making such a mood would be. Especially if one were…of the Feanorian temperament.”</p><p>“High-strung as a hanged man, you mean?”</p><p>He smiles, painfully. “Yes.”</p><p>Galadriel lifts her hands to her cheeks, which are cool thanks to a crisp breeze. She drags her fingers backwards, finding the silky curls behind her ears.</p><p>It’s an old habit of hers, one she’s only aware of because Aegnor brought it to her attention, and it’s only a habit she indulges in if she is deep in thought.</p><p>Finrod breaks her silence. “They’ll both live,” he says. “Fingon’ll see to it. I saw to it myself, a little.”</p><p>“Mind you don’t follow them wide-eyed over a cliff,” she chides sharply, dropping her hands to her lap again. “I mean it, Finrod.”</p><p>“I confess I don’t know what you mean; we’ve stretched the metaphors too far.”</p><p>“I mean,” she says, unable to hide her sincerity—her sympathy for <em>him</em>, alone—“Don’t get yourself killed.”</p>
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